"That there is no law against lascivious gestures, wanton and filthy dalliance and familiarity, whorish attire, strange fashions; such as are naked breasts, bare shoulders, powdering, spotting, painting the face, curling and shearing the hair; excess of apparel in servants and mean people. "It is offered to consideration, "1. That the justices of the peace at their Quarter Sessions may binde any such to the good behaivour. "2. That for a whorish attire, something of note be written upon the door of her house to her disgrace, there to continue till she wear sober attire." The character of this puritanical reformer's liberality may be estimated by his proposed remedies for the abuses of the press. As his party were in power, there was no longer any occasion for free discussion. Milton was opposed to such canting reformers as Sheppard, and maintained the liberty of unlicensed printing. "It is objected, "That there are disorders in printing of books, for which there is no remedy. "It is offered for this to consider of these things: "1. That printing-houses be reduced to a number. "2. That no books be printed but be first perused. "3. That no dangerous books be printed here, carried beyond sea, and brought in hither. "4. That the right of every mans copy be preserved. "5. That every man shall licence his own book and be answerable for it." On the accession of Charles II, a reaction took place; and people who had felt themselves coerced in their amusements by the puritanical party, seem now to have gloried in their excesses, not so much from any positive pleasure that they might feel in their vicious courses, but as evincing their triumph over those who formerly kept them in restraint. From the example of the king himself, a sensual, selfish profligate, vice became fashionable at court, where gross depravity of manners seems to have been admitted as _prima facie_ evidence of loyal principles. His majesty's personal favorites, from the wealthy noble who had a seat at the council-table, to the poor gentlemen who served as a private in the horse-guards, seem all to have been eager to divert the "merry monarch" by their shameless profligacy. The man of _ton_ of the period, was professionally a rake and a gamester, and often a liar and cheat; boasting of an intrigue with "my lady," while in truth he was _kept_ by "my lord's" mistress; and pretending that he had won a hundred pieces of "the duke," at the groom-porter's at St. James's, when he had merely "rooked" a gay city 'prentice of five pounds at a shilling ordinary in Shire Lane. The morals and manners of the country, generally, at that period, are not, however, to be estimated by those of the court and the so-called "fashionable world." A numerous and influential class remained uncontaminated by their example; and laboured zealously to stem the torrent of vice